No fancy flights, just go on and do it

Flight Centre boss
Graham Turner
has a concise set of standard operating procedures for his staff: “just don’t f--k it up", as he described in The Australian Financial Review profile on Tuesday. Mr Turner runs not an empire, but “families, villages, and tribes" based on small units led by junior managers that compete against the rest of the village and tribe. It’s a picturesque way of describing a clever, global business model made up of small parts that can be quickly scaled up and operated by staff with ordinary backgrounds – the opposite of many lumbering and more bureaucratic businesses. It’s easy to forget that bureaucracy was invented in the 19th century to make jobs easier to do, before it was discredited in management thinking. It’s now a byword for the over-processing and over-specialisation that still infests business. Mr Turner created
Flight Centre
in his entreprenurial image, which wouldn’t suit everyone. But it’s a refreshing change from many big companies smothered by administration and overbearing HR demands.